This review focuses on the concept of care, a concept that has never been more popular as a focus of study. It undertakes a critical review, motivated by the breadth of the field and the lack of ...coherence and linkages across a diverse literature. The review concentrates first on organizing and reviewing the literature in terms of key focus and, second, drawing out the strengths and weaknesses of existing work and making suggestions for how future work might proceed in COVID-19 times. While the existing literature offers many insights, some quite basic things need to be reconsidered, not least definition and conceptualization. Defining care as based on the meeting of perceived welfare-related need, I develop it as comprising need, relations/actors, resources and ideas and values. Each of these dimensions has an inherent disposition towards the study of inequality and it is possible, either by looking at them individually or all together, to identify care as situated in relations of relative power and inequality. The framework allows a set of critical questions to be posed in relation to COVID-19 and the policies and resources that have been mustered in response.
This article looks at the 2020 period of COVID-19 and especially the first months through the lens of public policy support for care in Europe. It covers the policy responses to both care for young ...children and frail, ill or disabled adults and develops an understanding of care as welfare-related activity focused on practices and resources oriented to meeting care-related need. The article's over-arching research question centres around how European countries responded to the 2020 pandemic, especially in regard to the types of care need that were recognized, the resources committed, the actors/agency that were supported or taken for granted and the values underpinning the responses. What we find from the review is that, while care assumed a strong place in public rhetoric, this was not reflected in greater public resourcing of care for young children or long-term care. Instead, care for children was refamilialized and long-term care was under-resourced and relegated to a secondary position; both were in many ways rendered further dependent on the private agency of individuals. In sum, the pandemic spearheaded some reversion to old practices and the opportunity to invest in care as a human need, a basis of rights and entitlements and a valued activity was not availed of.
Europe 2020 and the European Semester signal a major change of direction in EU social policy with new governance arrangements, policy orientations and politics. This paper analyses 290 Country ...Specific Recommendations and 29 interviews to answer two questions: 1) What type of social policy is being advanced by the EU at present? 2) How are EU social actors able to advance EU social policy under current conditions? It argues that the degree of progress in EU social policy in the European Semester (2011–15) has been conditional and contingent. EU social policy is more oriented to supporting market development than it is to correcting for market failures. We explain these developments by a combination of factors including the strong agency exerted by some social actors in a context of constraint, the moderation of expectations and the adoption of strategic practices by key actors, and political divisions among the Member States.
We introduce a model of monetary policy with downward nominal wage rigidities and show that both the slope and curvature of the Phillips curve depend on the level of inflation and the extent of ...downward nominal wage rigidities. This is true for the both the long-run and the short-run Phillips curve. Comparing simulation results from the model with data on U.S. wage patterns, we show that downward nominal wage rigidities likely have played a role in shaping the dynamics of unemployment and wage growth during the last three recessions and subsequent recoveries.
The Risk Assessment Program (RAP) at Fox Chase Cancer Center (Philadelphia, PA) is a multi-generational prospective cohort, enhanced for personal and family history of cancer, consisting of over ...10,000 individuals for whom data on personal and family history of cancer, risk factors, genetic and genomic data, health behaviors, and biospecimens are available. The RAP has a broad research agenda including the characterization of genes with known or potential relevance to cancer, gene-gene and gene-environment interactions, and their contribution to clinically useful risk assessment and risk reduction strategies. Increasingly, this body of research is identifying genetic changes which may have clinical significance for RAP research participants, leading us to confront the issue of whether to return genetic results emerging from research laboratories. This review will describe some of the important fundamental points that must be debated as we develop a paradigm for return of research results. The key issues to address as the scientific community moves toward adopting a policy of return of research results include the best criteria for determining which results to offer, the consent document components necessary to ensure that the participant makes a truly informed decision about receiving their results, and associated logistical and cost challenges.
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We introduce a decomposition of the growth in real median usual weekly earnings of full‐time wage and salary earners into parts due to earnings increases of those who remain employed, the intensive ...margin, and due to changes in those who are employed, the extensive margin. The intensive margin is procyclical and dominates during expansions. The extensive margin is countercyclical and important during downturns, especially during the Great and COVID Recessions. The extensive margin is mainly driven by entries from and exits to part‐time employment and nonparticipation, not unemployment.
Purpose
Outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) programmes are established in the minority of Swiss hospitals. We aimed to study the OPAT programme at the University Hospital Basel during ...a 3-year period to evaluate safety and outcome.
Methods
All patients treated in the OPAT programme between 2015 and 2017 were included in the study. Demographic, clinical and OPAT outcome data were extracted from the hospital information system. Differences between treatment periods were analysed and risk factors for readmission and adverse events identified.
Results
In total, 462 patients were enrolled from 2015 to 2017. Patient numbers and total treatment days increased by 68% and 116%, respectively. Indications included many complicated infections such as bone and joint (23%) and intravascular infections (13%). Of the identified Gram-negative bacteria, 25% produced extended spectrum beta-lactamases. The percentage of antibiotics administrated with an elastomeric device increased from 11% in 2015 to 29% in 2017, whereas the use of once-daily antimicrobials (such as ceftriaxone) declined. Adverse events were rare (
n
= 67; 14.6%) including only two severe catheter-related events. Cure was noted in 98% of patients. 30-day unplanned readmission occurred in 46 (10.0%) patients, and intravascular infections and a higher Charlson comorbidity index were identified as independent predictors.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates the successful implementation of a formal OPAT programme in a Swiss tertiary care hospital. Careful selection of patients and monitoring during treatment are crucial to avoid frequent readmissions. Hence, our data call for an expansion of OPAT services in Switzerland in the near future.
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